Greet the banks of the Jordan,the toppled towers of Zion . . .O homeland, so lovely and lost!O memory, so beloved and fatal!

Golden harp of the prophetic bards,why do you hang silent on the willow?Rekindle memories in our breasts!Speak to us of the age that was!

Like the fate of Jerusalem,you heave a sigh of cruel lament.O, may the Lord inspire you a notethat teaches virtue to endure!

Il Trovatore: Act II, Scene 2, Anvil Chorus

A broken-down hovel on the side of a mountain in Biscay. At the back, practically in the open, a large fire burns. It is early dawn. A group of Gypsies is gathered around.

GYPSIES: See! the heavens' great vaultremoves its gloomy, night-time tatters;it seems a widow who takes off at lastthe dark clothes that enfold her.To work! To work! At it, hammer!Who brightens the Gypsy man's days?The Gypsy maid!MEN [to the women, pausing in their work]:Pour me a draught; strength and couragethe body and soul draw from drinking.ALL: Oh, look, look! A ray of the sunsparkles brighter in my (your) glass.To work! To work! At it, hammer!

Aida: Act II, Scene 2, Triumphal Scene

PEOPLE: Glory to Egypt and to Isis,who protects the sacred land;to the King who rules the deltawe raise our festive hymns.WOMEN: Let lotus be twined with the laurelon the victors' brows;let a gentle cloud of flowersspread a veil over their arms.Let us dance, maids of Egypt,our mystic dances,as, around the Sun,dance the stars in the sky.PRIESTS: To the supreme judgesof victory raise your eyes'render thanks to the godson this auspicious day.[The troops march past. At last Radamès arrives under a canopy.]PEOPLE: Come, o conquering warrior,come and rejoice with us,in the heroes' path,let us throw laurel and flowers.PRIESTS: To the supreme judgesraise your eyes;render thanks to the godson this auspicious day.

Chorus and Orchestra of the Teatro all Scala, Lovro von Matačić, cond. EMI, recorded 1960

2. NO, THAT'S NOT ALL! FIRST, LET'S REVIEWTHE OPENINGS OF OUR OPERAS

This was always supposed to be part of today's program, but I couldn't help myself in last night's preview; since we had established all the elements, I couldn't refrain from putting them together. Well, here they are again -- in different performances, of course.

Nabucco: Overture and Opening scene

In the opening choral scene, the Hebrews assembled in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem await a dismal fate at the hand of the forces of the Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucodonosor, or Nabucco for short).

The High Priest ZACCARIA enters, escorting FENENA, daughter of Nabucco.

ZACCARIA: Have hope, my children! Godin His power has given a sign;He delivered into my powera precious hostage: [indicating FENENA]The enemy king's offspringcan bring us peace.HEBREWS: The sun of a glad dayhas perhaps risen for us!ZACCARIA: Curb your fears! Place your trustin God's eternal help!Aria, ZaccariaThere on the shores of EgyptHe gave Moses life;Gideon's hundred menhe rendered invincible one day.Who, in the extreme moment,believing in Him, has perished?HEBREWS: The sun of a glad day etc.ZACCARIA: Curb your fears! etc.

In the continuation of the scene, a noise is heard which turns out to be the arrival of the young Hebrew Ismaele, nephew of Zedekiah, the king of Jerusalem, bearing the news that the Assyrian king is closing in on the temple with his army. ZACCARIA suggests that Heaven may put an end to his wicked doings, entrusts Fenena to Ismaele, and sings a vigorous cabaletta (soon joined by the Hebrews), "Come notte a sol fulgente": "As night before the streaming sun, as dust before the wind, thou shalt vanish in your great trial, false god of Baal! Thou, mighty God of Abraham, descend to fight with us."

A hall in the Aliaferia palace; a door on one side leads into the Count di Luna's apartments. FERRANDO and a number of the Count's retainers are resting near the door; some soldiers are pacing back and forth in the background.

FERRANDO: Look sharp there! The Countmust be served with vigilance;sometimes, near the house of his belovedhe spends whole nights.MEN: Jealousy's fierce serpentsare writhing in his breast.FERRANDO: In the Troubadour, whose songrises at night from the gardens,he rightly fears a rival.MEN: To drive off the sleepthat hangs heavy on our eyelids,tell us the real story of Garzia,our Count's brother.FERRANDO: I'll tell you; gather around me.SOLDIERS: We, too...MEN: Listen then. Listen.FERRANDO: There lived a happy father of two sons,the good Count di Luna.The second boy's faithful nurseslept next to his cradle.As dawn was breaking one fine morning,she opened her eyes and whom did she findnext to that baby?MEN: Who? Speak ... Who was it?FERRANDO: A dark, despicable gypsy crone!Wearing the symbols of a sorceress!And with a sullen face, over the boyshe cast her bloody, baleful eye!The nurse is seized with horror;she utters a sharp cry in the still air;and, in less time than it takes to tell,the servants hasten into the room;and with shouts, blows, threats,they expel the wretch who dared enter.MEN: Their hearts were moved by righteous scorn;the crazy crone provoked it!FERRANDO: She claimed that she wanted to castthe boy's horoscope. The liar!A slow fever began to destroythe poor child's health!Weak, covered with a strange pallor,broken, he trembled at night,and moaned piteously all day long;he was bewitched!The witch was pursued,seized and condemned to the stake;but her cursed daughter was left,to administer a horrible revenge!This criminal committed an unspeakable act!The child disappeared,and they found still glowing embers,on the very same spotwhere the witch had once been burned!And, alas, a child's skeleton,half-burnt, still smoking!MEN: Ah! the wicked, unspeakable woman!It fills me with both rage and horror!What about the father?FERRANDO: His remaining days were few and sad;yet an undefined presentimentat heart told him that his sonwas not dead; and when he lay dying,he desired that our mastershould swear to him not to stophis search. Ah! It was in vain!MEN: And was no news ever had of her?FERRANDO: No news!Oh! were it granted meto track her down some day!MEN: But, could you recognise her?FERRANDO: Considering the years that have passed,I could.MEN: It would be time to send herto her mother, in hell.FERRANDO: In hell?It's common belief thatthe wicked witch's damned soulstill lives in the world, and when the skyis black she shows herself in various shapes.ALL: It's true! It's true!On the edge of the rooftopssome people have seen her!Sometimes she changes into a hoopoe or an owl!Other times, a raven; more often, a civet-owl,flying through the dawn like an arrow!FERRANDO:: One of the Count's men died of fearbecause he had struck the gypsy's forehead!He died, died of fear! He died, died of fear!MEN: Ah! Ah! He died! Ah! Ah! He died!FERRANDO: She appeared to him in the form of an owl,in the deep calm of a silent room!MEN: Of an owl!FERRANDO: She looked with gleaming eye,looked at the sky, sorrowing,with a bestial cry!MEN: She looked! She looked!FERRANDO: Midnight was just striking! Ah!MEN: Ah![Midnight strikes.]ALL: Ah! A curse on her, the infernal witch! Ah![A drum is heard. The soldiers run to the back. The servants gather at the door.]

A hall in the Palace of the King at Memphis. Left and right, a colonnade with statues and flowering shrubs. Rear, a great door beyond which can be seen the temples and palaces of Memphis and the Pyramids.

Dialogue, Ramfis and Radamès RAMFIS: Yes, rumour has it that Ethiopia daresto defy us again and to threaten the Nile Valleyand Thebes. Soon a messengerwill bring the truth.RADAMÈS: Have you consultedholy Isis?RAMFIS: She has namedthe commander?in?chiefof the Egyptian armies.RADAMÈS: Oh happy man!RAMFIS [looking intently at Radamès]: Youthful and valiant is he. Now I bear the divinecommands to the King. [Exits.]

Recitative and aria, Radamès RADAMÈS: If I werethat warrior! If my dreamswere to come true! A valiant armyled by me… and victory… and the acclamationsof all Memphis! And to return to you, my sweet Aida,crowned with laurels…to tell you: for you I fought, for you I conquered!

Heavenly Aida, form divine,mystical garland of light and flowers,of my thoughts you are the queen,you are the light of my life.I would return to you your lovely sky,the gentle breezes of your native land;a royal crown on your brow I would set,build you a throne next to the sun.Heavenly Aida, form divine,mystical gleam of light and flowers, etc.

Performance note: I wasn't going to use this 1976 Aida, even though there's a lot I like about Kord's conducting, with its capacity for sweetness and lyricism (I have fond memories of his performance with a different cast), and, for all his pitch and other technical oddities, about McCracken's gutsy Radamès as well. Still, there are those pitch and other technical oddities, and the years had definitely taken their toll on Hines's bass. So I'm going back in time to offer an alternative -- well, two alternatives:

Again, after the 1871 Cairo premiere of Aida, as Verdi prepared for the Italian premiere the following year he decided that the opera needed a full-fledged Overture, and duly added a selection of additional material from it. But before the premiere took place he thought better of it and left the original Prelude in place, leaving the Overture unperformed until it was resurrected in 1940. Eventually it had the distinction of receiving not one but two "first" recordings. We heard the second one earlier in this post; now here's the earlier "first recording," credited as "reconstructed and revised" by Piero Spada.

It's a perfectly decent piece, this Overture, but now that we've developed some familiarity with the opera's opening sequence as we know it -- simple short Prelude (with just two basic tunes, the "Numi, pietà" section of Aida's opening-scene aria "Ritorna vincitor," and what we can now recognize from the Triumphal Scene as the stately, vaguely ominous theme associated with the Egyptian priests -- can you imagine how disruptive the full Overture would be in place of the Prelude? Clearly Verdi came to this conclusion.

3. FINALLY, WE COME TO THE "VALUE ADDED"PORTION OF OUR PROGRAM (WELL, SORT OF)

The thing is, I don't know whether you'll be outraged or relieved to learn that I just can't do this to you. We really haven't heard all that much music, but what with all these confounded texts, which I really don't feel right about leaving out, it's simply overwhelming. It's all done, or just about, but when I looked at it all strung together, it was just too much. So we're going to have to put our bits of operatic add-ons till next week. I'll just leave you with these teases:

Il Trovatore: Act III, Scene 2, Aria, Manrico, "Di quella pira"

MANRICO: The horrible blaze of that pyreburns, enflames all of my being!Monsters, put it out; or very quicklyI'll put it out with your blood!Before I loved you, I was yet her son;your suffering cannot restrain me...Unhappy mother, I hasten to save you,or at least hasten to die with you!Unhappy mother, I hasten to save you,or at least hasten to die with you! etc.To arms! To arms! To arms!

A faintly lit hall in the palace of the king, Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucodonosor, or Nabucco), in Babylon. The high priest of the exiled Hebrews, Zaccaria, enters accompanied by a Levite carrying the Tables of the Law.

Come, o Levite! Give methe Tables of the Law! Of a new miracleGod wishes me to be the agent! He sends me a servantfor the glory of Israelto tear apart the darkness of an unbeliever.

Thou on the lips of the prophetshast fulminated, o almighty God!To Assyria in strong accentsnow speak Thou with my lips!And with songs sacred to Theeevery temple will resound;over the shattered idolsThy laws will rise.over the shattered idols etc.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Again, in last night's preview we heard how our three Verdi operas begin: Nabucco with its imposing Overture; Aida with its ethereal Prelude; and Trovatore, with that slashing martial orchestral introduction that leads us right into the captain Ferrando's midnight "ghost" story. In each case we're headed toward a "first event." We're jumping right to those musical "events," after which we're going to fill in the blank that got us there -- a full-fledged choral scene in the case of Nabucco, just a wisp of dialogue in the cases of Trovatore and Aida.

1. OUR THREE "FIRST EVENTS"

Nabucco:The Hebrew high priest Zaccaria offers hisbeleaguered people a ray of hope

The High Priest ZACCARIA enters the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, where the Hebrews are huddled awaiting doom at the hands of the Assyrian king Nabucodonosor. ZACCARIA is escorting FENENA, daughter of Nabucco.

ZACCARIA: Have hope, my children! Godin His power has given a sign;He delivered into my powera precious hostage: [indicating FENENA]The enemy king's offspringcan bring us peace.HEBREWS: The sun of a glad dayhas perhaps risen for us!ZACCARIA: Curb your fears! Place your trustin God's eternal help!Aria, ZaccariaThere on the shores of EgyptHe gave Moses life;Gideon's hundred menhe rendered invincible one day.Who, in the extreme moment,believing in Him, has perished?HEBREWS: The sun of a glad day etc.ZACCARIA: Curb your fears! etc.

[In the continuation of the scene heard in the excerpt from the 1960 Met performance, a noise is heard which turns out to be the arrival of the young Hebrew Ismaele, nephew of Zedekiah, the king of Jerusalem, bearing the news that the Assyrian king is closing in on the temple with his army. ZACCARIA suggests that Heaven may put an end to his wicked doings, entrusts Fenena to Ismaele, and sings a vigorous cabaletta (soon joined by the Hebrews), "Come notte a sol fulgente": "As night before the streaming sun, as dust before the wind, thou shalt vanish in your great trial, false god of Baal! Thou, mighty God of Abraham, descend to fight with us."]

FERRANDO: There lived a happy father of two sons,the good Count di Luna.The second boy's faithful nurseslept next to his cradle.As dawn was breaking one fine morning,she opened her eyes and whom did she findnext to that baby?MEN: Who? Speak ... Who was it?[Pasero: 0:39; Vinco: 0:38]FERRANDO: A dark, despicable gypsy crone!Wearing the symbols of a sorceress!And with a sullen face, over the boyshe cast her bloody, baleful eye!The nurse is seized with horror;she utters a sharp cry in the still air;and, in less time than it takes to tell,the servants hasten into the room;and with shouts, blows, threats,they expel the wretch who dared enter.MEN: Their hearts were moved by righteous scorn;the crazy crone provoked it![Pasero: 1:53; Vinco: 1:51]FERRANDO: She claimed that she wanted to castthe boy's horoscope. The liar!A slow fever began to destroythe poor child's health!Weak, covered with a strange pallor,broken, he trembled at night,and moaned piteously all day long;he was bewitched![Pasero: 2:36; Vinco: 2:35]The witch was pursued,seized and condemned to the stake;but her cursed daughter was left,to administer a horrible revenge!This criminal committed an unspeakable act!The child disappeared,and they found still glowing embers,on the very same spotwhere the witch had once been burned!And, alas, a child's skeleton,half-burnt, still smoking![THE PASERO RECORDING ENDS HERE]MEN: Ah! the wicked, unspeakable woman!It fills me with both rage and horror![Vinco: 3:57] What about the father?[Vinco: 4:01] FERRANDO: His remaining days were few and sad;yet an undefined presentimentat heart told him that his sonwas not dead; and when he lay dying,he desired that our mastershould swear to him not to stophis search. Ah! It was in vain![Vinco: 4:31] MEN: And was no news ever had of her?FERRANDO: No news!Oh! were it granted meto track her down some day!MEN: But, could you recognise her?FERRANDO: Considering the years that have passed,I could.MEN: It would be time to send herto her mother, in hell.FERRANDO: In hell?[Vinco: 5:06] FERRANDO: It's common belief thatthe wicked witch's damned soulstill lives in the world, and when the skyis black she shows herself in various shapes.ALL: It's true! It's true![Vinco: 5:46] On the edge of the rooftopssome people have seen her!Sometimes she changes into a hoopoe or an owl!Other times, a raven; more often, a civet-owl,flying through the dawn like an arrow!FERRANDO:: One of the Count's men died of fearbecause he had struck the gypsy's forehead!He died, died of fear! He died, died of fear!MEN: Ah! Ah! He died! Ah! Ah! He died!FERRANDO: She appeared to him in the form of an owl,in the deep calm of a silent room!MEN: Of an owl!FERRANDO: She looked with gleaming eye,looked at the sky, sorrowing,with a bestial cry!MEN: She looked! She looked![Vinco: 6:17] FERRANDO: Midnight was just striking! Ah!MEN: Ah![Midnight strikes.]ALL: Ah! A curse on her, the infernal witch! Ah![A drum is heard. The soldiers run to the back. The servants gather at the door.]

RADAMÈS: If I werethat warrior! If my dreamswere to come true! A valiant armyled by me… and victory… and the acclamationsof all Memphis! And to return to you, my sweet Aida,crowned with laurels…to tell you: for you I fought, for you I conquered!

Heavenly Aida, form divine,mystical garland of light and flowers,of my thoughts you are the queen,you are the light of my life.

I would return to you your lovely sky,the gentle breezes of your native land;a royal crown on your brow I would set,build you a throne next to the sun.

FERRANDO: Look sharp there! The Countmust be served with vigilance;sometimes, near the house of his belovedhe spends whole nights.MEN: Jealousy's fierce serpentsare writhing in his breast.FERRANDO: In the Troubadour, whose songrises at night from the gardens,he rightly fears a rival.MEN: To drive off the sleepthat hangs heavy on our eyelids,tell us the real story of Garzia,our Count's brother.FERRANDO: I'll tell you; gather around me.SOLDIERS: We, too...MEN: Listen then. Listen.

A hall in the Palace of the King at Memphis. Left and right, a colonnade with statues and flowering shrubs. Rear, a great door beyond which can be seen the temples and palaces of Memphis and the Pyramids.

Dialogue, Ramfis and Radamès RAMFIS: Yes, rumour has it that Ethiopia daresto defy us again and to threaten the Nile Valleyand Thebes. Soon a messengerwill bring the truth.RADAMÈS: Have you consultedholy Isis?RAMFIS: She has namedthe Egyptian armies'commander-in-chief.RADAMÈS: Oh happy man!RAMFIS [looking intently at Radamès]: Youthful and valiant is he. Now I bear the divinecommands to the King. [Exits.]

Really, that's quite enough for a "preview," don't you think? (Of course we haven't actually heard all that much music. It's just all those damned texts that sprawl out over so much online real estate.) Still, having come us this far in our three operas, it seems a shame to wait till tomorrow to put this much together. So here, opera by opera, is "our story thus far." (You'll note that I've cheated with Nabucco, stitching together an Overture and an opening scene that do feature the same conductor and orchestra, but from totally unrelated recordings, an LP of Verdi scenes by the bass Nicolai Ghiaurov and an LP of Verdi overtures and preludes conducted by Claudio Abbado made by different record companies nearly nine years apart.)

Friday, November 26, 2004

[11/26/2010 preview] Verdi shows us three ways to open an opera -- an "overture," a "prelude," and an "introduction" (continued)

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Alessandro Pagliazzi conducts the Brno State Opera Orchestra in the Prelude to Aida at the Lower Austrian Gars am Kamp outdoor festival, August 2008.

We've got two performances of the Nabucco Overture: Muti's slambang-ish one (recorded, for the record, 15 years after his EMI complete recording of the opera) and the more leisurely and more emotionally resonant Serafin one.

By the time Verdi entered his middle period, he had mostly settled into the shorter prelude as his favored way to start an opera. After the Cairo premiere of Aida in 1871, he must have thought that so grand an opera needed a full-scale overture, and set about expanding the original Prelude to three times its original length. Before the 1872 Italian premiere he came to his senses and left the Prelude as it was. (We're going to hear the full Overture on Sunday.)

In his final operas, Otello and Falstaff, as we've noted previously, Verdi dispensed with any introductory orchestral "piece" in favor of a brief orchestral introduction. But he'd already done this in Trovatore. The brief fanfare-style orchestral introduction leads us directly into a scene we'll hear more of tomorrow night. In tonight's excerpt we hear the cry of "All'erta! All'erta!" as Ferrando, a captain in the army of the Count di Luna, rousts the band of retainers with whom he's maintaining a late-night vigil outside one of the count's palaces.

Trovatore was the middle opera of three composed in an astonishing roughly two-year span, which announced Verdi's "middle" period. I thought it would be interesting to hear the very different preludes to Rigoletto (a dazzling piece of mood-setting which really doesn't even have a tune) and La Traviata (a matched pair to introduce the first and last acts).

Sunday, November 21, 2004

[11/21/2010] Sunday Classics: As the names remind us, the concerto and the sonata (and the sinfonia and the opera) came out of Italy (continued)

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Simon Preston plays the first two movements of Handel's The Cuckoo and the Nightingale Concerto with Trevor Pinnock conducting the English Concert. The "cuckoo and nightingale" movement begins at 2:50. (The rest of the concerto can be found here.)

Let's proceed with this basketful of concertos by our "adoptively Italian" masters.

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750)

For anyone who's heard tell of a major triad, Bach launches this concerto with, pure and simple, the E major version of this most basic building block of Western classical harmony. And yes, it really is possible to generate memorable melodic material from the E major triad! At the other end of the glorious Largo is a rollicking chase-finale.

Last night, when we heard that magical little concerto for four violins by Telemann, I promised you a Telemann concerto that I fell in love with on an old Musical Heritage Society LP of assorted concertos by the composer. That disc featured the excellent Baroque conductor Kurt Redel and his Munich Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, with Georg Schmid playing the G major Viola Concerto. As I noted, somehow I got separated from that record acquired the Viola Concerto on a later MHS Telemann LP built around violist Philipp Naegele (who switched to violin for the four-violin concerto).

I see that the Telemann G major Viola Concerto is now all over the place, and it's not hard to understand why. Each of its four movements (in the slow-fast-slow-fast configuration that comes out of the Italian sonata da chiesa, or church sonata) is a compact gem, melodically and rhythmically irresistible and memory-implanting. We had a video clip of the lovely opening movement; here's the Naegele recording of the whole piece.

Handel appears to have composed 12 organ concertos in all, published in two sets of six (Opp. 4 and 7) with a catch-all volume of the remaining four. The concertos are obviously popular with organists, who have nothing else quite like them to play, but also among music-lovers who relish the enormous personality -- witty and engaging but also, when called for, searingly songful -- that comes through them.

As Op. 7, No. 4 -- again, in the four-movement slow-fast-slow-fast form -- begins, maybe it's just a brief illusion, but the opening Adagio places me in, of all places, the world of Boris Godunov! And yet, without relenting on the grief, Handel works us round to the major for a jolly Allegro. After a brooding organ solo (a typical format for these concertos, which were generally written for use during before and between acts of Handel's oratorios, labeled "Aria," we finish with a fast movement in the minor.

HANDEL: Organ Concerto No. 10, Op. 7, No. 4

A word about the performances. The wonderful Biggs series of the 16 concertos with Sir Adrian Boult conducting was made for the bicentennial of Handel's death in 1959, on an organ that Biggs tracked down in Warwickshire on which Handel was known to have played. Marie-Claire Alain's Erato recordings with Jean-François Paillard represent a lither, spritelier approach, while the performances by Franz Haselböck and Pál Nemeth are stylistically more "authentic" in approach.

With regard to the slight differences in pitch among our performances, remember that the accompanying instruments have to be tuned to the pitch of the organ -- you can't change its pitch!

I can't resist throwing in -- call it an encore -- at least the "cuckoo and nightingale" movement, with its lovely echo and bird-song effects, of the F major Organ Concerto known as (what else?) The Cuckoo and the Nightingale.